The World as Will and Idea, Vol. I — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp
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The translator’s English as printed (R. B. Haldane & J. Kemp). The original-language text is not held; names are romanised as the translator printed them.
§ 36. History follows the thread of events; it is pragmatic so far as it deduces them in accordance with the law of motivation, a law that determines the self-manifesting will wherever it is enlightened by knowledge. At the lowest grades of its objectivity, where it still acts without knowledge, natural science, in the form of etiology, treats of the laws of the changes of its phenomena, and, in the form of morphology, of what is permanent in them. This almost endless task is lightened by the aid of concepts, which comprehend what is general in order that we may deduce what is particular from it. Lastly, mathematics treats of the mere forms, time and space, in which the Ideas, broken up into multiplicity, appear for the knowledge of the subject as individual. All these, of which the common name is science, proceed according to the principle of sufficient reason in its different forms, and their theme is always the phenomenon, its laws, connections, and the relations which result from them. But what kind of knowledge is concerned with that which is outeide'ahS indejpendent of all relations, that which alone is really essential to the world, the true content of its j^ienomena^ that” wlu^ is subject to no ..changej_ and therefo£e is known jwith e^^ truth for all time, in^ a the /(ieos, which are the direct and adequate objec;
^ This last sentence cannot be uiiderstocKl without some acquaintanos with the next book.
THE PLATONIC IDEA ; THE OBJECT OF ART. 23^
tWity of the thing in-itself, the will ? We answer. Art. tiie work of genius. Tt* repeats or reproduces the eternal Ideas graspeT'tKi’ough pure contemplation, the essential and abiding in all the phenomena of the world ; and according to what the material is in which it reproduces, it is sculpture or painting, poetry or music. Its one source is the knowledge ol Ideas ;”its~bhe“aTm' tlie communication of this knowledge.
While science, following the unresting and inconstant stream of tRe fourJoTd Torins ^ rea^n and consequent^ with eacTi~en3'"attarhe3r~sees further, and can never reach a final goal nor attain full satisiacEion^ny more than by running we can reach the place where the clouds touch the horizon; art, on the cbnCTSfy) at its goal Tor it plucks the object of its contemplation out of the stream of the world’s course, and has it isolated before it.
And this particular thing," which in that stream was a small perishing part, becomes to art the representative of the whole, an equivalent of the endless multitude in space and time. It therefore pauses at this particular tliiiig^j^ the course of time stops ; the relations vanish for it ; only the essential, the Idea, is its object.
We may, therefore, accurately define it as the way of viewing things independent of the principle of sufficient reason, in opposition to the way of viewing them which proceeds in accordance with that principle, and which is the method of experience and of science. This last method of considering things may be compared to a line infinitely extended in a horizontal direction, and the former to a vertical line which cuts it at any point.
The method of viewing things which proceeds in accordance witli the~pnnciple of sufficienf reason is thh rational method^ and it alone is valid ^n3~of ”use in practical life and in science. The method whichAooks away from the content of this principle m the method of genius,, which is only validlin3~of use in art. The first is the method of Aristotle ; the second is, on the whole, that of Plato. The first is like the mighty storm, that rushes along without beginning and without aim, bending, agitating, and carrying away everything before it; the second is like the silent sunbeam, that pierces through the storm quite unaffected by it The first is like the innumerable showering drops of the waterfall, which, constantly changing, never rest for an instant ; the second is like the rainbow, quietly resting on this raging torrent Only through the pure contemplation described above, wluch ends entirely in the olyectj can Ideas 1)6 comprehended ; and the nature of g^ius consists in pre-eminent capacity for such contemplation.
Now, as this requires that a man should entirely forget himself and the relations in which he stands, is simply the completest olgectivity, i.e., the objective ten-; dency of the mind, as opposed to the subjective, which is directed to one’s own self— in other words, to the wjH.
Thus genius is the faculty of continuing in the state of pure perception, of losing oneself in perception, and of enlisting in this service the knowledge which originally existed only for the service of the will; that is to say, genius is the power of leaving one’s own interests, wishes^ and afms entirely out of sight, thus of entirely renouncing one’s own personality for a time, so as to remain jpure knowing subject, clear vision of the world ; and this not merely at jiidmenfsTbuf'" for a sufficient lengfh~br time, and with sufficient consciousness, to enable one to reproduceT)ydefiberate ^rt what has thus been apprehended, and " to fix in lasting thoughts the wavering images that float ffiefore tlm rmhd.’* It is as if, when genius appears in an individual, a far larger measure of the power of knowledge falls to his lot than is necessary for the service of an individual will ; and this superfluity of knowledge, being free, now becomes subject purified from will, a clear mirror of the inner nature of the world.
This explains the activity, a.mounting even to disquietude, of inen of genius, for the present can seldom satisfy them, BecauseTt^ddes not fill their consciousness. This ^ives
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